Finding Home
by sarahslushie711
Summary: And here, right here, is where she finds it. The idea is beyond what she can handle just yet, and the entire thing terrifies and excites her in ways she's never even imagined. But mostly, she thinks she's found it. No, she knows it. One-shot for future multific. R&R.


**Disclaimer: I really own nothing beyond the perception of the characters and the situations they are put in. And even most of that isn't mine.**

**Finding Home**

Marlene's always looking for something, and never quite finding it. It's an underlining quality in the life she leads and the way she experienced life. She's been looking since her seventh birthday, the day her world slipped into the dark abyss she fights at every turn. The day home shatters and a little girl is left to fend in a world no longer hers.

She finds fragments of it in Sirius' laugh because she's known _that_ even back in the days of giant Christmas trees and the sounds of hummed renditions of _Belle Amie_. They're whispers in her mind, yet prominent as ever, and damn it all if she doesn't have to stop herself from setting flame to the memory and begging the likes of Severus Snape to just _wipe it clean already_ when just yesterday Marlene had to lock herself in the bathroom to pull it together. But Sirius Black is a brother really, and all she knows of those is that they've been around longer than she has. It's familiar and consuming and steady, like they are. Loyal, and that's what comforts her most when what should be is no longer and what is simply can't keep her. And when he says the right thing that sets her rage to bed for a short nap, she gets a taste of it all and has to keep looking for the real thing.

Marlene just _has_ to, even if she's not into things like _have to's_ because she's bloody knackered sideways on ten different levels all at once at this point.

She remembers the feel of it when Nicki flicks mahogany strands off her shoulder. It's a soft, confident manoeuvre that is so familiar in its particular wind and toss that outlines a history of similar, taught actions. It speaks of everything but cold, distant fathers and shattered chandeliers marking Marlene's first kill and actually succeeds in filling Marlene with a nostalgic sense for something she'll never manage.

At some point in her fifth year she stops questioning it, how it makes no sense at all. It's something that will drive her mad if she dwells on it and she already just wants out more than not.

She smells it in the atmosphere when Lily Evans is around. Maybe it's the warmth and the wisdom in her sparkling green eyes, the way her smile lights a room or her hair stands out in a crowd and the muggle-born _still_ manages to believe she's just the same. Only more in tune, Lily claims. Marlene calls her out on that rubbish, but there's really nothing to call out, which only proves how much the red haired witch actually_ lives_ the theory. And with all of that, there's a constant scent that lingers in Lily's step which touches something profound inside her that she _doesn't want to think about, damnitalltohell._

She's searching for it, but doesn't like it any more than she can when she's only got a sketch of it. So, yeah, it sets her in a mood that the likes of Medusa herself would envy. She rather fancies ignoring it all.

She believes it with Reg's stance. Holds it at a distance and almost recognizes it because it has the possibility of settling into his Black and her McKinnon. He's the kind of wizard that fits her witch and knows her as well as their brother, but is that spell darker and calls her out for fighting it all. He kills it, when he's young and _stupid_, but he tries to fit the fragments with spell-o-tape so she can't fault him forever. But the experience poisons her for the worst and the best, and now that she has a picture of what it may be she's hunting, she won't let it go.

Marlene just wishes he could have _not_ been such an idiotic dunderhead and royally screwed them over for _what could have been's _and _if only's. _That way she wouldn't feel so violated and substantiated in this whole mess.

But it does help her close the door on parts of her past, and for all that _what could have been's _and _if only's _still live on in her head, it's subdued. Just a whisper she wants _obliviated_ when she can't and strengthened when she can.

She misses it in Gideon Prewitt's arms, and that means he's got it because you can't miss what _you _don't have, that's something she'll attest to personally. He's a brilliant, driven wizard, like she's a brilliant, driven witch, and it's all in all a relationship that proves to be less damaging in its aftermath than every single other one she's run into. Contrary to popular belief, Marlene can learn, it's whether she chooses to apply those lessons that determine the end result. The red haired wizard with sunny freckles and a penchant for jealous lapses that come with the twin territory is just what she needs to brighten the cold, haunted nights and realize that Merlin, she _does_ like it sometimes.

He still makes her feel something she's only truly experienced with one wizard in her lifetime, and she misses the possibilities that she thinks she may never find. But at this stage in her life, where tomorrow is a question mark and today is brimming with words like _should've_ and _could've_, she's witch enough to admit that yeah, it'd not her kind of future.

Her future's a perpetual black hole, and even if she isn't into things like _hoping_, she does it anyway when she sits alone at dusk watching football matches in her quiet empty flat. And it's always the same, that she finds it eventually, that it's all worth it. She's give her life ten times over and maybe ten more, just to know it's not all hopeless. It's never for herself, that last bit, as she's lost the right to that a long time ago, when innocence was wrenched from her soul and her search began.

She finds it when her lips meet _his_, and she thinks she may have finally slipped and been touched. Because in her mind, she doesn't deserve it, and as much as she looks, she can't actually find it, can she? No. No, of course she can't, and she'd be truly mad to think so, and this is _stupid_, she thinks as she tightens her grip on his hair and tugs in a last ditch attempt at a battle, let's herself do something as illogical as melt. Kind of.

Or maybe it's the world that melts, she amends as his grip on her bruises and she gives back as good as she takes. The fire here is _that_ strong, no matter how much she wants that to be a lie, even if she really doesn't. So she presses and pulls and rips into it some more as she tries to extinguish the flames, attempts to verify what she's always been avoiding for a reason.

It doesn't help, but she's a fighter.

They pull away from each other, and even their ragged breath is battling, fighting, and waging a war they've both lost no matter the outcome, end result or any such dragondung. But she's not in the mood for logic and applying logic with Lupin always manages to make her toss it and everything else to do with sanity to the wind, and she's way too far gone to not be committed anyway at this point, so she gives it one more stab.

"Now do you believe me?" she echoes, but it's the most pathetic thing she's ever said and with this man, that's breaking some solid records, isn't it.

He stares at her, eyes shifting between the both of hers and then her lips, and her eyes again, and she burns at the realization that reflected in his whiskey eyes, hers don't look so empty. And there is only one answer to her million and two questions beyond the resounding _oh hell_ that seems to resound in her mind.

He must have found something very distinct in her gaze, or maybe in her grip, and now it's not just her who's been hit with a metaphorical _incendio_.

"Shut. _up_," he replies, and pulls her in before she has the chance to remember that her and metaphors are like water and oil. Don't mix and only used at suspended fuel when something needs to burn.

And here, right here, is where she finds it. The idea is beyond what she can handle just yet, and the entire thing terrifies and excites her in ways she's never even imagined. But mostly, she thinks she's found it. No, she knows it.

Discovering Remus Lupin is coming home.


End file.
